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If your brioche dough ever turned out greasy, dense, or didn't even rise, this is why. I'm Gemma Stafford, professional chef, and I've been making doughs for over 20 years of my career. The perfect brioche dough is not just about the ingredients, it's more about the technique, the tips that you need to follow. You need to build structure, add your butter correctly, and control the temperature at all times. So tip number one is an important one, and I will admit I haven't done this since I was in home economics class when they used to tell us to keep everything cold, but there's a reason for it. When it comes to brioche making, enrich doughs,
pastries, something high in fat, keep your ingredients cold. Your eggs, even your flour, your dry ingredients, keep everything in the fridge so they stay nice and cold because the mixing of the dough generates heat, so we don't want to add extra heat to anything. But the one exception is butter. Our butter has to be room temperature, what we call the Goldilocks effect. Not too hard, not too soft, just right. Pliable, soft like that. It is not melting that will make your dough greasy. If your butter is too cold, it will stay in lumps, and those lumps will not break down, and you'll end up with greasy pockets. So leave your
butter out at room temperature. I like to leave it out overnight to get this consistency. And sticking with our butter tips, please, because it's an enriched dough and butter is so important. Good quality butter. I like to use truly, which is an Irish butter, which I think now is the new gold standard, which comes from Ireland, the southeast of Ireland, actually where I'm from. And it is really delicious. I use salted, some people say do not use salted in a brioche dough. It adds extra flavor. I'm all about it. So that's really important. So tip number two, using a stand mixer for brioche dough is absolutely vital. Brioche dough needs extensive kneading for a
long period. So you really need to be able to get that, you know, the power of the engine to knead it up and with a dough hook, so it can really work and pull and develop that gluten. I do not advise making a brioche dough by hand. I've tried it before many, many years ago, it gets very messy. The heat of your hands starts to warm up the dough, the butter starts to melt. So definitely, this is a stand mixer job. So tip number three, you don't often see written in recipes, but it's very important. You want to develop the gluten and activate the yeast in this dough before adding in any butter, let it come into a ball, let it form, wake up that yeast. And that's when you add in the butter. Do not add in
the butter too early. So it's been around four to five minutes kneading by itself. As you can see, my dough has come together. Let me open it. So this has been kneading by itself four to five minutes. The dough has come together, it's formed a ball. This is nice and worked. I can feel that it's a bit tougher. Now it is time to add in our butter. And my dough is still nice and cold, which is really important because we add in all those cold ingredients. So now this brings us to tip number four, adding in the butter. Now I don't want you to be worried about like if you're doing it right or not, just watch how I do it and you'll get the hang of it. So bit by bit, we're going to slowly add in the butter. You do not add
it in all at once. It needs to be a gradual process. You add in, this might not be helpful, but a knob that you're talking around like a half an ounce. Once it's fully incorporated, add the next one in. This is a slower part of the recipe, but that's okay. Good things come to those who wait. It's absolutely worth it. When I was in culinary school, I remember so clearly the day that we did Enrich Doughts, we did Danishes, we did croissants, and we did brioche over two days. And I remember the texture of the brioche. I remember that really pull apart like almost like see-through layers of brioche. And people often ask me, how do you get that? That their brioche can end up a little bit like bready. And it comes down to the kneading. It comes down
to the process. You trust the process, like it works. You just need to spend the time. What you're seeing now is right on track. You've got a sticky dough, we're adding more moisture, we're adding more fast. It's getting much softer. So while this is kneading, let's talk about tip number five, dough temperature. If your dough gets too warm while it's kneading, your butter can break and your dough will get greasy. And that is not what we want. If you are concerned about the temperature, use a thermometer. If it exceeds 80, then you are in a bit of a gray area where your butter could break. If at any point you're worried about it being too warm, too soft, take it off the machine, pop it in the fridge for 15 minutes, and
go back onto the machine again. Do not fear the fridge at this stage. It'll be your best friend. So our dough is done kneading. And this brings me to my next tip number six, which is don't add extra flour. I know often with my yeasted doughs, I always say clean the bowl. Just like we did earlier, we had a clean bowl. But once you add in something like butter, you are not going to get a firm bowl that comes in one big piece. Your dough is soft like this. It's pliable. This is what it's supposed to look like. Do not be tempted to add in any more flour. Adding flour will change the consistency and the end result. What you're looking for is a soft, yellowy, pliable dough, just like this one. Okay, step number seven. Now I will admit I only
learned about this recently that it's kind of mandatory cold fermentation. To get the best results from brioche, you need a cold dough. So put it in the fridge overnight, and then we can shape it the next day and bake it. If you do not have time to leave it overnight, just give it two hours. Let that butter solidify. Let the dough get cold. I just cover it and let it rest. These Gemma made bowls make life really easy. For brioche dough, you can use it for many different things. Do it in a loaf pan. Do it in a traditional pan, hot dogs, or even hamburger buns like the way I'm doing right now. And that brings me to my tip number eight.
Don't rush the rise. Enriched doughs are notoriously slower than a traditional yeasted dough by like double the time. Do not worry. They are sluggish. It's just the way they are. What you do not want to do with a dough like this is put it in an oven to proof faster. The butter will melt and you'll end up with greasy dough. What you're going to want to do is let it sit out at room temperature and be patient. For my rolls, they are going to take around an hour to an hour and a half even to proof correctly. If you're doing a loaf, it could take up to two
hours, maybe even longer. So it all depends. You're going to want to see the dough double in size and that's when you know you're good to go. While our brioche is baking in the oven, I have some hotline questions that you guys submitted and they're really good ones. One question comes in and asks, can I freeze raw dough? And my answer to that is you'll never get the same result as you would if you baked it off fresh. So can you, you can do what you want. If you want to freeze it, you can freeze it. But I guarantee you that you're not going to get the same result if you baked it off fresh. What I would do instead is bake it off fresh, then freeze the results. Often when a dough has been frozen that's yeasted, it doesn't always come
back to life and it'd be kind of a waste. So I would say better not to freeze raw yeasted doughs. This next question brings up a really good point. I see people online making brioche and some people need it and some people don't. What is the right way to do it? So great question because I do on BiggerBolderBaking.com have a no need brioche dough. It works really well, it has lovely flavor, it does not have the gluten development that the one on the machine has. So the difference is you'll still make a lovely dough if you do no need. It will have flavor, it'll be yummy. But if you want that classic very like pull and the really lovely long gluten strands and the air, you're going to want to knead that on a machine rather than do a no need
method. You'll just get different results for this dough. It's a really great question because you kind of wonder which is the right way. You just choose which result you want. When you have really good brioche dough, it feels like such a treat. The dough does take extra work, time and patience and care, but the results are so worth it. When you follow my few easy tips, no matter what brioche recipe you're making, you are going to get the best results every time. A golden brown dough, beautiful on the outside and soft and fluffy in the middle. When you make brioche dough right, it will melt in your mouth and following my tips will give you that result. Now you have all the tips to go forward and make the best
brioche dough. Thank you so much for watching. I'll be back here again really soon. Same time, same place next week.
